Actually, Mr. Smarty Pants, there are two switches side by side on the lower central panel that turn off the MCAS System. And they are NOT momentary switches. They disable the System until manually turned back on.

It’s so difficult to get a new aircraft design certified with FAA so companies keep using old designs from the 50s. The newer engines would not fit correctly on the old fuselage so that had to place them in such a way that tended to make the plane pitch up and stall. So they created mcas as a correction to the problem. The did not tell anyone because it would require additional training. Additional training means more expensive for the buyers of the planes. They thought if they told them, less people would buy the planes. Boeing is at fault , but also the FAA for being so dam Strict all the time and it kills innovation

It isn't mentioned in the Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM), apparently because Boeing decided to keep it out as there was "no need for pilots to know about it". Nonetheless the pilots apparently did realise what was happening but too late to do anything about it.

And the way it was designed, and advertised, it is not even sure that pilots were told there was such a system in the first place.

The MCAS was destined to make the 737MAX behave exactly like the 737-800, despite having larger, heavier, more powerful and differently placed engines; it was stated that it was so similar to the 737-800 that pilots would not need any re-training to transition.

The data recorder indicates that MCAS was turned off. When they were unable to correct the trim either electrically or manually, they turned it back on. By then the pressure on the jack screw was so great that the only way to recover would have been to reduce power and relax back pressure on the elevators. They didn’t have enough altitude to recover.